Average Debt for 2013 Grads Tops $30k in 6 States; Only 1 Below $20k

Student debt levels for newly minted bachelor’s degrees continue to rise, but how high varies greatly by state and by college, according to a new report by TICAS’ Project on Student Debt. In 2013, seven in 10 (69%) graduating seniors at public and private nonprofit colleges had student loans. Nationally, the average debt for these graduates was $28,400, two percent higher than for their peers in 2012, but there was significant variation by college: at nearly one in five colleges, average debt levels increased 10 percent or more. In both years, about one-fifth of new graduates’ debt was in private loans rather than safer federal student loans. For-profit colleges could not be included in the analysis because so few report their graduates’ debt loads.